Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/330

316 with the ordinarily ascribed divine attributes. Which of these did I suppose Mr. Harrison meant by "all-negative deity"? I was compelled to conclude he meant that which in the ontological argument was said to be a "negation of conceivability." How could I suppose that by "all-negative deity" Mr. Harrison meant the deity which Dean Mansel as a matter of "duty" rehabilitates and worships in his official capacity as priest? It was a considerable stretch of courage on the part of Mr. Harrison to call the deity of the established church an "all-negative deity." Yet in seeking to escape from the charge of misrepresenting me he inevitably does this by implication.

In his second article Mr. Harrison does not simply ascribe to me ideas which are wholly unlike those my words express, but he ascribes to me ideas I have intentionally excluded. When justifying my use of the word "proceed," as the most colorless word I could find to indicate the relation between the knowable manifestations present to perception and the Unknowable Reality which transcends perception, I incidentally mentioned, as showing that I wished to avoid those theological implications which Mr. Harrison said were suggested, that the words originally written were "created and sustained;" and that though in the sense in which I used them the meanings of these words did not exceed my thought, I had erased them because "the ideas associated with these words might mislead." Yet Mr. Harrison speaks of these erased words as though I had finally adopted them, and saddles me with the ordinary connotations. If Mr. Harrison defends himself by quoting my words to the effect that the Inscrutable Existence manifested through phenomena "stands towards our general conception of things in substantially the same relation as does the Creative Power asserted by Theology;" then I point to all my arguments as clearly meaning that when the attributes and the mode of operation ordinarily ascribed to "that which lies beyond the sphere of sense" cease to be ascribed, "that which lies beyond the sphere of sense" will bear the same relation as before to that which lies within it, in so far that it will occupy the same relative position in the totality of our consciousness: no assertion being made concerning the mode of connection of the one with the othei'. Surely when I had deliberately avoided the word "create" to express the connection between noumenal cause and the phenomenal effect, because it might suggest the ordinary idea of a creating power separate from the created thing, Mr. Harrison was not justified in basing arguments against me on the assumption that I had used it.

But the course in so many cases pursued by him of fathering upon me ideas incongruous with those I have expressed, and making me responsible for the resulting absurdities, is exhibited in the most extreme degree by the way in which he has built up for me a system of beliefs and practices. In his first article occur such passages as—"seeking the Unknowable in a devout way" (p. 502); can any one